Outdoor Hour Challenge

Spring has arrived in the Klein Karoo, and I have been really busy gardening. The garden shows signs daily that a new season is unfolding. While planting out seedlings and pulling out spent winter vegetable plants, I noticed a few of my parsley plants had started to go to seed. I cut them back and took the cuttings to dry over my AGA stove.

With one lush branch of parsley in hand, I sat down to create a new Mom’s nature journal entry ~

I decided to create a double-page spread and made the left page a more personal page with a leaf rubbing and my garden observations, while I used Wikipedia to create a more formal botanical parsley study on the right-side page. I also researched the difference between chervil and parsley! They are both from the same family with very similar leaf and flower shapes, but the seeds differ. Now, I know!

You will also notice in the photos, that I have both my sketchbook and nature journal lying out on my desk. I hope that this will prompt me to spend a little time every day on a quick sketch or painting or nature journal entry. It is true that I have just one teen to homeschool at this time, and because she is working very independently, I have more time at my desk to sketch and journal. It is a wonderful season in my homeschooling journey.

Again I urge moms to join their kiddies with these simple nature journal moments. It is wonderful to learn and create your own Mom’s nature journal. Join Barb’s Outdoor Mom Journal using her prompts each month. Share your journal with us on your own blog or on her blog in a comment.

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This past week I noticed our grapevine leaves had started to turn pale green, browns and fall off. I sketched some autumn grapevine leaves for my weekly mom’s nature journal.

I played around with my watercolour pencils, mixing, blending and colouring different blocks of autumn colours along the left side of my page. I painted my leaf with watercolour paints. I also made a leaf rubbing and blended watercolour pencils over the brown paper which I tore and pasted along the right side of my 2-page layout.

Taking time each week to draw, sketch or paint in my nature journal is such an enjoyable moment of “Mother Culture” and it is an ongoing exploration and place of interest and growth.

Join Barb’s Outdoor Mom Journal using her prompts each month. Share your journal with us on your own blog or on her blog in a comment.

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For my weekly nature journal time, I decided to focus on unusual leaves and I was inspired with these colorful plants ~

This week I took out my watercolor pencils. With just my fine waterbrush and the watercolor pencils, I was able to create detailed, blended colors that suited my leaves perfectly.

Watercolor pencils have several wonderful advantages:

Fine pencil points allow for tiny, accurate details in your sketch.

You can blend pencil colors while dry on the paper, or you can blend perfectly using a blending pencil.

With water brush you can blend the colored areas on the paper just like watercolor paints.

You can wash over large areas with water once you lightly color over the area with pencils.

You can achieve a lovely transparency with watercolor pencils.

If you wet the pencil tip or draw over wet paper before drawing on it, you can achieve an intense, deep color. A thick opaque look can be achieved by dipping the pencil tip in water and applying the color wet.

If you brush the tips of the watercolor pencils with a wet paintbrush, you can use your pencils just like a tiny paint pallet. For bright bold colors, take the pigment directly from your pencil tip. Dip your brush in water and press to the tip of the pencil. This will give you undiluted pigment for strong colors.

You can make a paint pallet for your children: Use sturdy cardstock and thickly color little blocks of each color. You child needs a little water and a brush and can dab the colored block to lift off pigment to paint.

There is absolutely no mess or cleaning up.

These pencils last for ever! Buy quality pencils and look after them and they will serve you for years!

Watercolor pencils are fabulous for outdoor painting. They are easy to store and easy to handle. I put an elastic band around them and hold the bunch of pencils in one hand and quickly dab the pencil tips with my waterbrush or grab the pencil I need to sketch or color my page.

Watercolor pencils dry quickly and can you can store them in a pencil bag straight away.

Join Barb’s Outdoor Mom Journal using her prompts each month. Share your journal with us on your own blog or on her blog in a comment.

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With my teenager’s increasing independence in their homeschooling, our days have settled into a new rhythm, and I have found peace in making some new, small, personal goals for myself. Charlotte Mason calls it “Mother Culture“. One of my goals is to regularly sketch in my nature journal. I look forward to quietly making an entry once a week during a lovely time of quiet observation, some scientific research, and creative sketching, painting or journaling.

Simple, gentle prompts which lead to her monthly Outdoor Mom Journal posts.

Nature Finds

As my grown children and older teens no longer go on nature walks, I am privileged to go for walks with my little granddaughter who comes to visit us often. She notices all the tiny details and loves to pick up leaves, feathers, stones and any other interesting nature finds. I keep her nature finds on a little tray. Often I use her finds as a journal inspiration.

This nature tray was inspired by Celeste, a mommy to 6 little kiddies under 8, of Joyous Lessons, who writes about their nature tray. She set up a little tray for her family’s nature finds and encouraged her children to look at, play around with, and record these ‘finds’ in their journals. At the end of the week she stores or clears the tray ready for the new week.

She says,

“In a way, this holds me accountable too: I don’t like to clear out the tray until I have had time to document and sketch a bit, but the tray must be emptied to make room for our new finds. So through the routine, I’m nudged into at least a weekly journal entry.

This seems like such a minor tip–perhaps this is something you already do! But if you’re anything like me, it’s little things, those easy habits that allow the “extras” to become smoothly woven into the rhythm of our days, that make all the difference. It’s this little habit that prods me to get out the colored pencils and notebooks!”

Instagram

I find some amazing inspiration on the Internet. Remember I posted about Helen at Middlewood Journal? Here’s someone who inspires me I found on Instagram … I am totally in awe of L Gastinger, who describes herself as “a botanical artist, illustrator, documenter and interpreter of all things exquisite and awesome in nature”. Her double-page spreads are so intricate, details and perfect, you simply must pop over to view her work!

My Garden

Lastly, I love gardening and this year has been a year of big gardening changes for me. After struggling for years working in my vegetable garden which was very near a row of willow trees, my hubby and I finally created a shade-netted vegetable garden in a lovely, sunny open space. It has been a joy to harvest food in less than 3 months! I also completely transformed a decorative flower garden into a herb and salad/ kitchen garden outside my back door. I cut down huge shrubs, transplanted flowering plants and moved all my herbs. I prepared the new beds with ash, manure and compost layers and covered them with a thick mulch layer. Late summer and autumn seeds and seedlings are in and I am already planning my winter seeds. With all this happening, there is plenty to note, sketch, paint, photograph and journal!

So, simply, I plan to set time aside each week for my nature journal entries and aim to participate in a monthly Outdoor Mom’s Journal.

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We have experienced an unusually mild, dry winter. There has been no snow on our mountains and yet we have experienced some of the worst frost ever. Since it is still August, it came as a surprise to find our fruit orchard full of blossoming trees. My previous early spring blossom sketches in my nature diary were done September last year.

My youngest daughter led me out to enjoy the warm sunshine and we went to view “our” Maple tree. We first measured our Maple tree in 2011 and the little tree was just as tall as Miss.L12, just over 1 meter high. This spring it is twice my height! I was glad that my nature journal contained many of my older nature study pages because we could compare our current tree study with previous years and seasons.

We spent time looking at the variety of fruit trees’ blossoms. I was utterly enchanted by our blue berry blossoms which looked like little bells. We sketched and painted and we both experimented with wet-on-wet water painting which worked wonderfully! (I’m afraid that my scanner did not pick up the colors of our watercolors.)

As our time was running out, and we had already spent much of our morning outside (time flies when you are having fun sketching), I sent Miss.L12 with the camera to capture all the blossoms. We plan to use the photos to sketch and paint or simply to compare the differences between the different blossoms.

We are so happy to enjoy our lovely early spring nature study here in South Africa and wish a happy autumn to those living in the Northern Hemisphere!

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Birds

This past week we looked at the swallows flying over our farm dam. They flitted down, quickly skimming over the surface of the water and scooping up tiny insects, and then flying up to join the flock.

I tried to watch just one swallow. He must have made at least 5 catches before I lost him in the flock. They fly in seeming random circles, up, around and then down to the water. Such simple freedom!

I suggested that Miss.L and I find the swallow’s nests. But we were disappointed.

Several nests were old and broken.

We could see the grass and feather lining inside this broken nest. There was not one active swallow nest under any eave or in any shed or storeroom.

We wondered why.

They must be nesting somewhere … but where?

We found evidence of new starts on nests under an eave, but for some reason, the swallows left to try somewhere else.

Our nearest neighbor is over 700m away. Perhaps they are nesting there?

Our bird nature walk has turned us into detectives.

Who knows what we’ll find.

Back home we researched the swallows on Google and we enjoyed Anna Botsford Comstock’s description in The Handbook of Nature Study of the different swallows ~

“The barn swallow has a distinctively tailor-made appearance; its red-brown vest and iridescent blue coat, with deeply forked “coat tails” give it an elegance of style which no other bird, not even the chic cedar waxwing, can emulate.” (page 111)

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Although we have been outdoors most days, and have quite an impressive new rock and stone collection on our table, we have not approached our time scientifically. I enjoy my child’s natural delight and detailed observations, but we did not research, compare, investigate, analyze, or even note our findings.

It was more a simple pleasure.

And Charlotte Mason would approve. She encourages us to give our children regular opportunities to get in touch with God’s creation and to allow these experiences to form a source of delight that will last throughout their lifetime.

So, with this as my long-term approach, I am confident that a scientific approach may develop in time.

(May I encourage young moms not to do what I did when I started homeschool? In my early days with my eldest child, I over-emphasized our nature study sessions and made it too intense, too heavy. I was very ‘results’ orientated. This approach stunted my child’s natural delight and she eventually pulled out of our outdoor hour times.)

Right now, our nature study is planned as a natural nature experience!

How have you enjoyed your nature study times? What works for your children? Have you any tips for new moms? Please share in the comments.

I encouraged the kids to sketch and/or paint the animals of their choice, and took our “What to Draw and How to Draw” sketch notes by E.G. Lutz along, but when her pictures did not turn out as she wanted, Miss.L10 became discouraged .

I gave her the camera and asked her to take several photos of the animals.

She could simply print out the photos she liked and write her observations, or use the photos to make more realistic sketches.

I enjoyed sketching and painting several of our farm animals ~

I subtly read selections from Anna Botsford Comstock’s “Handbook of Nature Study” and we discussed the cow in quite a lot of detail. We loved the description of “illuminated with gentle eyes” because we all think our cow’s eyes are mesmerizing!

Despite our genuine hands-on work with our gorgeous Jersey milk cows, Anna’s scientific information about milk production was really interesting and her detailed descriptions of the different cow breeds made us examine our Milly with new eyes. Her bony hips and slightly concave spine and dainty legs are characteristic of her breed. We smiled at the description of her “fly brush” tail as we have all had a swipe across the head at some time while milking!

I hope to read a little more about horses and sheep as we spend more time this week completing our mammal studies.

So, with our indoor work done in just a few minutes, we took our notebook page, clipboards, pens and pencils and went outside. We sat on the grass very close to the tree, looking, listening, quietening … and then journalled.

I love these sketches!

My middle-schooler journalled first. Then she outlined the one little leaf I allowed the girls to pull off the tree and so she captured the exact size. She drew in the veins in detail. Then she did a leaf rubbing.

When her younger sister saw the leaf juice made a mark on the paper, she also took the leaf to make a rubbing …

She drew around the edges of the leaf.

Then she made a rubbing, but her rubbing was different. She placed the leaf on top of her page and rolled her pen firmly across the leaf blade.

Then she traced the marks the veins had left on the page.

Clever.I journalled and sketched in my nature journal.

I focused on the leaf edges, veins and leaf arrangements in detail.

Then I sketched the small tree as viewed from a distance.

I really love our time outdoors.

It is so important for me to appreciate nature with the kids. If I don’t take part in this discovery, I become the teacher/ observer, taking photos and reading the study guides, which is partly why I think we stopped doing regular nature walks when we first started our homeschooling. I have to admit that my best efforts in “making it educational” and “teaching the facts and details” have caused more harm than good. My over-zealous approach has often caused my older children to withdraw.

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